subota, 19. siječnja 2013.

Biota - Cape Flyaway (2012)

Biota was founded in 1979 in Fort Collins, Colorado, as the Mnemonist
Orchestra. Over the years, the Mnemonist Orchestra developed into Biota
(the musical contingent) and Mnemonists (the visual contingent). Both
Biota and Mnemonists work as one on productions of musical and visual
components. The group has released nine LPs, one EP, one Tape, and four
CDs on both their own Dys label and Recommended Records UK.

After 5 years of extensive and careful work, the new and much
anticipated CD by this extraordinary collective, who have no parallels,
no rivals and no peers, is at last complete. It's a dense and
indescribable orchestration of electric and acoustic guitars,
clavioline, trumpet, Hammond organ, micromoog, biolmellodrone, electric
and acoustic violins, bass, mandolin, accordion, piano, rubab, kit
percussion and sometimes voice, layered and radically processed in the
unique Biota manner. There is a leitmotif of folk elements in this piece
that emerge from the roiling, swirling quicksand of sound we now expect
from Biota, with texts by WB Yeats and snatches, arrangements and
influences floating by way of Christy Moore, June Tabor, Judy Collins,
Sandy Denny, Bert Jansch, the Bothy Band and older traditional sources.
Biota craft sonic worlds that relate to, but are not built like, the
music with which we are familiar; for them time is a continuum rather
than a sequence of events; - www.squidco.com/

After
many, many years of work, this is probably their finest as well as
their most accessible. The heavily treated sonic material remains, but
as in their last few, it's applied to a very 'folky' under-carriage.
Think of the most twisted-yet-musical take possible on Sandy Denny/June
Tabor/Judy Collins imaginable and you have a glimmer of what they are
doing here. Really nice. REALLY NICE. And a gorgeous art portfolio is
included. Highly recommended.
"After 5 years of extensive and careful work, the new and much
anticipated CD by this extraordinary collective, who have no parallels,
no rivals and no peers, is at last complete. It’s a dense and
indescribable orchestration of electric and acoustic guitars,
clavioline, trumpet, Hammond organ, micromoog, biolmellodrone, electric
and acoustic violins, bass, mandolin, accordion, piano, rubab, kit
percussion and sometimes voice, layered and radically processed in the
unique Biota manner. There is a leitmotif of folk elements in this piece
that emerge from the roiling, swirling quicksand of sound we now expect
from Biota, with texts by WB Yeats and snatches, arrangements and
influences floating by way of Christy Moore, June Tabor, Judy Collins,
Sandy Denny, Bert Jansch, the Bothy Band and older traditional sources.
Biota craft sonic worlds that relate to, but are not built like, the
music with which we are familiar; for them time is a continuum rather
than a sequence of events; a simultaneous present in which past and
future possibilities exist conterminously. With a 24 page full colour
art portfolio from the Biota collective. This album’s aural world is as vast as space, and seemingly as
limitless; they are the one group most apt to embrace the latest
technology, and to put it to good use to create "anti-music". But the
outcome is so beautifully flowing and amazingly profound that their
radical methods create positive change in a sonically transparent way,
rather than to bludgeon the listener into submission by means of shock
tactics. The result then, is elucidating and exciting. BIOTA are the
un-challenged masters of hypnotic sound collage; each instrument is
highly treated with effects BEFORE being recorded, which shows that the
intention of the music is the means unto itself, and there is no
cheating or "fix it in the mix" principles at play. This is real,
veritable, and important stuff." - www.waysidemusic.com/

Am I hyperbolizing by stating that the “Biota sound” is one of the
most immediately identifiable in the history of modern music and,
absurdly, also one of the less known? No matter. Quality prevailing upon
quantity is a necessity when considering the potential audience of Cape Flyaway
– which, like any release by this never-enough-lauded collective of
multimedia artists, is destined to remain in the memory and the hearts
of those who have been following them from the beginning and are
conscious of the process of evolution, refinement and acknowledgement of
artistic and cultural roots that has informed the group’s output.
It’s not a real surprise to see British folksong materials employed
as a crucial element in this addictive album. Biota have been interested
in purely acoustic fonts for a long while: steel-stringed guitars,
accordion, violin and zither are a fixture in their palette since
decades ago. The coexistence with the vintage sonorities generated by
Micromoog and Hammond organ (or the by-now-mythical Biomellodrone *)
turns the innumerable transitions to which the music is subjected into a
reversal of roles between the sonic object and the listener. It is in
fact the latter that gets studied, permeated and ultimately cleansed by a
ceaselessly mutating cosmos of interlaced timbres, ever-shifting
spectral dissections and incorporeal-yet-solid contrapuntal
constituents. Fragments of traditional tunes, the “presence” of Sandy
Denny, Bert Jansch, Judy Collins, Christy Moore, June Tabor, Bothy Band
as ghost guides; textural remnants that touch the very depths of one’s
soul (the ninth track – all are nameless – is literally moving in its
juxtaposition of guitar arpeggios, bent-string peculiarity and
orchestral evanescence).
Though singling out names in such an outstanding joint effort is
profoundly unjust, I’ll force myself to point out the impressive-as-ever
mixing and editing job performed by William Sharp (assembling scattered
sources and giving them meaning and intensity in a coherent wholeness
is not an everyday task), the nearly regretful apparitions of Charles
O’Meara’s piano and, of course, the modestly excellent contribution by
vocalist Kristianne Gale, whose heartfelt renditions add further
humanity to the record. Expectedly (and luckily), the inside booklet
contains a set of magnificent visual works by Mnemonists which no word
of mine can describe (check www.biotamusic.com
for more). The same feel of inadequacy is experienced by this writer
whenever a new work by the ensemble is spinning in his player. How to
set the continuum of many superimposed existences – biological and aural
– into mere words? Can you detail a REM phase without producing
nonsensical literature? Can you explain why certain combinations of
frequencies make us suddenly envision a blurred phantom of events
occurred thirty-five summers prior, in turn eliciting a state of
melancholic torpor?
If you can, give me a call. The CD is still emanating its scents as
I’m writing, but specifying my exact mental position at the moment is
unusually tough. This sense of displacement recurs every five/seven
years or so: bet your house that we’ll be there at the next meeting too,
incongruously attempting to babble details about what refuses to be
detailed.- Massimo Ricci

The latest album from this long-running experimental collective arrives
five years after their last effort, which found the group settling a bit
too comfortably into their by-now familiar heavily processed textural
soup, in which fragments of too many instruments to name are swirled
together into a dense pastiche of ethnic musics, fractured pop, folk,
progressive rock, and droney electronics. This time around, all the
familiar Biota elements are still in place, but the group has conceived a
set of songs structured around the influence of English folk, and the
subtle changes this triggers in their music are palpable and very
welcome. Singer Kristianne Gale returns from the last Biota album
(breaking a streak of guest vocalists sticking around for only one album
ever since the band started incorporating vocals in the mid-90s) and
contributes lilting, haunting ballads that evoke and sometimes quote
from classic English folk tunes. Her sad, high tones appear sporadically
throughout the album, acting as its central presence even when she
hangs back and lets the music speak for itself. The juxtaposition of
these melancholy melodies with the group's jangly guitars, organ drones
and warped drums makes for an intriguing combination, rendering these
classic motifs somewhat strange and new due to the context.- seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/

An interview
with Bill Sharp/BiotaBy Beppe Colli

As I have already argued at great length
in my review, it doesn't take much to define Half A True Day - the new
album by the visual/musical collective from the USA going under the name
Biota - as a work of enormous depth and beauty; a musical environment that
after a few listening sessions (of the attentive kind) appears to be one
of the high points in the course of the group's travelogue.
Yes, they are a group whose work is quite
difficult to read, as it's only natural with all those who create something
that's highly original. But in the case of the music by Biota, the fact
of a multitude of meanings appearing at the same time is without a doubt
one of its distinctive features. So, in a way, musicians and listeners
negotiate the different layers of the sound landscape.
So, is it difficult music? Without a doubt,
it is - but not necessarily more difficult, I'd say, than other music that's
already filed under "difficult". What's more, I find it really
easy to believe (even if the mere thought makes me feel bad) that, given
the proper amount of "pressure", Biota could have become a "trendy"
group, the kind one spots listening to a soundtrack (at the movies, in a
theatre, or - why not? - while watching a "modern" TV serial, maybe
on cable?), even - maybe - in one of those ads that give instant fame - and
money.
I immediately became curious to know more,
so I asked Bill Sharp - a model of kindness - whether he would accept my
idea to talk about this new chapter in the life of the group. He did, and
the interview was conducted via e-mail, in the course of the last two weeks
in November.

Though I have
more than a few questions about the new Biota CD, I'd really like to
start this conversation by going back in time. This is something I have
been curious to know for quite a long time: Though acknowledged in the
booklet's liner notes, with Gordon Whitlow getting a compositional credit
for it, the final track on Object Holder has no title. Why?
Several of us viewed
the piece as an environment of transition, as if a member of the Object
Holder population was moving out of that world and toward the next, whatever
that next might be. So, given that the state of our follow-up work was
undetermined, this transition was a question mark. It could also be viewed
as an extended fadeout of the overall composition. In any case, we enjoyed
the thought that it might simply appear, unanticipated, to the listener.
This reflects our embrace of the surprise element in our working process.What
does the CD title - Half A True Day - mean? It's "True" that
I find confusing (but also "Half", I'm afraid...).
The
project is largely about uncertainty - in everything from our daily lives
to our embrace of the unknown in our music making, as just mentioned. I
think the title carries forward similar references from our past work.
However, like past titling, we didn't make a conscious effort to connect
with previous projects. It's simply the natural way we gravitate in trying
to represent the sounds, the concepts, our working methods in just a few
words. This element of uncertainty is crucial to the current work, because
the compositions grew out of the interaction between the determined and
the unforeseen. And, it's also one way for the listener to approach the
organisation of the sound over time. The overlapping of numerous compositional
details - always in motion, not always fully resolvable - sets up a changeable
truth about the whole - something we hope is malleable by and for the listener.
Ideally, this yields a fresh experience each time.
"Proven
Within Half, Half a True Day" might imply we almost got there as producers,
as conceptualists, whatever. We almost answered our questions. (Almost
never measured not found.) Now it's up to the listeners, as composers.
In my own case, had I not needed to at some point call my contribution
"complete," I'd still be messing with it. And, in a way, I still
do now as a listener. I still hear new interactions. I'm at the production
and mixdown end of this process, and I can't convey how remarkably harmonious
"unrelated" sound components can be. Our studio process invites
these interactions, as we build upon and organise them further.The
album presents a "Cast Of Characters" which includes both familiar
faces, and people I'm not at all familiar with: Steve Emmons, Kristianne
Gale, Rolf Goranson, Randy Miotke, and David Zekman (also Charles O'Meara,
whom I assume to be TAFKAV?). Would you mind talking a bit about them?
Steve
and the late Rolf Goranson worked on early Biota projects involving repetitive,
cyclical electronic parts that interacted in a volatile environment. Specifically,
they built portable battery-powered circuits that, when employed in chorus,
tended to hatch a restless, hungry beast. The devices were a bit unstable
(intentionally so) and their interaction produced a great many pleasant
surprises. The Emmons/Goranson work is found on the first Biota LP (1982)
and on the rough study for that work known as "Roto-limbs." We
transplanted a few appendages from this period for Half a True Day.
Kristianne
is a traditional folk singer whose voice is also well suited to instrumental
interplay in an environmental setting. We are always interested in the
ambiguity of voicing amongst sound sources - the blur in distinction between
the pure vocal and the played acoustic instrument in sonic interplay. Kristianne
has given us a very powerful resource in this regard, and one distinct
in its utility from the pure song form of Susanne's and Gen's work on OH
and Invisible Map, respectively. As a producer, it has been extremely rewarding
to work with this broad range of vocal nuances and compositional approaches
over three projects. Randy
Miotke has worked on past projects in an editing and mastering capacity,
and his role has grown as the work has become increasingly defined by its
assembly characteristics, while demanding more exacting tools for that
endeavour. It is here - in the final stereo editing phase - that we turn
to modern software in the Miotke studio. With this new album, we've also
enjoyed working with Randy for the first time as an instrumentalist. The
same holds true for David Zekman, a long standing friend of the group,
who joins us at last on electric violin and mandolin. His compositional
clarity was invaluable, bringing to the extended format a thread of essential
emotion and determination, interwoven throughout.
I
envisioned a similar role for contributions from the late Andy Kredt, scouring
the archives in mid '06 for lines that might augment the developing tonality
of the project. Andy's energy was palpable on those recordings. Snippets
of his past work fell into place as if tailored for the new.
Charles
O'Meara (aka Vrtacek) returns with the piano that has energised so much
of our work since Awry and Tumble. His pieces ground the maelstrom in a
simple beauty. There is always a fundamental humanity in his playing -
a personality that survives whatever we may do to mangle, invert, or mechanise
his parts.What's
a
"Crown bass"? Isn't/wasn't Crown a brand of amplifiers?
Crown
is the manufacturer of Tom's hollow body 4-string - vintage 1960's, perhaps
early '70's. I'm not sure if there is any relation to the classic amp makers,
whose IC-150A pre-amp we employ in the studio monitoring system. We note
Crown in the instrumentation because of the guitar's distinctive sound,
apart from that of other bass sources in the projects.What's
a
"Biomellodrone"? (And where did you find a Micromoog that actually
worked?)
The
Biomellodrone is an instrument born of our tendency to kluge together outboard
processing gear just to hear what it might emit. Mnemonist founding engineer
Mark Derbyshire and I devised this one from three boxes while musing about
the endearing defects in a Mellotron's workings. An early digital sampler
feeds a looping chord to a pitch shifter, which in turn applies tape transport-like
wavering, gating, and musically useful interval shifts to the chord via
commands from an external keyboard. A bit shaky, but I'll take the Rube
Goldberg approach over a refined software plug-in any day of the week.
Randy
Yeates is our analog hunter out there. If anyone can dig up an operational
Moog, it is he. Better yet, we simply employ any malfunctions we encounter.
His Micromoog was well suited to the textural backdrop he envisioned for
these compositions. Sometimes, as in the case of our Clavioline, we have
no direct reference for the correct operational state of a device. We are
fortunate to have the Clavioline manual but, beyond that, must relish its
idiosyncrasies and bring them to the music as if we had encouraged them
all along. There is no definitively correct operational state for sound
sources in this studio setting. Case in point: Tom's prepared music boxes,
which make several appearances in the new work. Each box was altered individually,
in isolation from the others. Their harmonies with each other - and with
existing elements of the compositions - are part accidental, yet always
guided. The work grows from these interactions, however harmonic or dissonant.
Editors and mixers add and subtract. Instrumentalists bind the population
into a functioning whole."Recorded
and mixed between Fall 2002 & Summer 2007" is a very long time.
Did the group ever happen to lose faith in the project during the process?
I
don't think we lost faith during the first half of that period, but each
of us negotiated difficult stretches of loss and uncertainty during that
time. The focus varied. By the point at which the work solidified into
a proper project - with an identity unique to our history, and with an
endpoint visible - I think we quickly gained momentum and completed the
work in less time than we might have in the past (in this case, roughly
two years). But the energy ebb and flow has changed. The dynamics are different
for musicians everywhere, I think.I
seem to detect a parallel between the last track on Object Holder and
the last piece - Index Point #4 of the closing track, Passerine - on
Half A True Day. Does my impression hold water?
It
does, in the sense that I think the lone player in each case symbolises
a resident of the larger sound population who in the end finds him/herself
reflecting on that place in the world. (Or, at the very least, reiterating
or solidifying that role.) In the Passerine close, the accordion evolves
out of the processed state it occupied in the broad context of the 70 minute
composition and into a more natural state, in a perhaps more familiar environment.
Yet even this final regression is deceptive and open to interpretation.
Was the pure state present all along, but merely masked by other activity?
It is, in common with the OH ending, suggestive I think of some finality
in this space... and of perhaps eventual movement into a new place and
time.I
would really hate to spoil readers' many moments of surprise when listening
to Half A True Day. However, I wonder whether it would be possible for
you to talk about the new work, in general terms.
I'm
pleased you mention the surprise element. We always hope this key component
of our working process is carried forward into the listening experience.
In Half a True Day, we similarly wish to convey a sense of perpetual transition
for the listener. This quality might arise from a number of forces at play:
perhaps the continuously shifting overlay and juxtaposition of elements.
Or the unanticipated arrival and departure of new ones. In each case, new
harmonies and dissonances arise. New relationships within the musical population
are established, though they remain transitory. Much of this activity is
intended to operate at the edge of resolution on initial audition, hopefully
to bloom as the listener becomes locked into the peculiarities of this
environment. It may be analogous to watching a film of indeterminate plot
line, where the content resides in the value the viewer sees in each character
and the nuances of their interaction. And the conviction that the cast
is intertwined at multiple levels and moving toward a common resolution,
however mysterious.
Equal
attention was given to spatial details and the building of environments
in which this interchange takes place. Half a True Day embodies significant
departures here from earlier works, while maintaining our emphasis on alternative
approaches to spatial processing. We are struggling toward a result that
manages to embrace both the familiar and the alien simultaneously. It's
the sense that one's native language - the way in which we comfortably
describe our world - is indeed being spoken, yet the routine translation
is garbled. This confounding might then encourage in the composers and
listeners a new compromise amongst the figures in the play; a new organisation
of their activities.Biota's
work really needs a great amount of involvement on the part of the listener.
Talking in general, do you see people as more or less willing to dedicate
a certain amount of their time to the exploration of an "unknown
quantity"
(meaning, an object that appears to be "aesthetically mysterious")
when compared to ten or twenty years ago?
It's
a bit frustrating because I can easily spend 5 years in the near-suspended
animation that is a Biota project, and not have much sense of how the modes
of perception are changing in the world of listeners outside. Emerging,
I may be in for a rude surprise. The expanding volume, speed, and ease
of information delivery, including that of aesthetic pursuits, may mean
that listeners will expect facile solutions delivered right alongside any
challenges. This vast amount of data must be efficiently organised. An
aesthetic work might just fit into the
"weird" category, be gobbled up as such, and promptly deleted.
Or - more encouraging - the powerful delivery might incite the investigative
spirit and actually liberate curiosity. I don't know which will win out.
I think it will come down to the prevailing habits of consumption. If there
is a continuing trend toward the visual and toward increased speed, quantity,
and disposability of same, then it will take a backlash of basic human inquisitiveness
to bring us back to a thoughtful approach to the arts. A hasty mass mindset
will overload, crash, turn introspective, and begin to look for substance
in the aesthetic experience.These
days there's a huge debate going on about things like "legal and
illegal downloading", "the death of the CD", "the
death of shops", "what future for artists?", etc. Though
by no means surprising, the topic of "sound" - as in "the
quality of the sound of music when sent/listened to on those devices
most common today" - gets little or no attention. What's your opinion
of this, both as a producer of music, and as a listener (and fan)?
At
the same time that widespread, rapid delivery of art - be it video, music,
or whatever - enables a larger audience, the delivery medium can degrade
the work itself while lowering its apparent value to that audience. It
is early to say whether there is a net benefit for non-mainstream musicians
with a limited audience. We have, potentially, a greatly expanded and almost
instant audience via Internet access, including the journalistic opportunities
that accompany this. Yet the most widespread means of delivery (compressed
files suitable for mobile applications) offer a degraded representation
of the work - not to mention the limitations of the playback technology
under these conditions. Aesthetic value will ultimately reside in the mindset
of the listener, that is: how the mode of consumption effects the lasting
value of the art object in the life of that listener. So there is ample
cause for concern. We are certainly in the midst of the most profound shift
in many decades, and I may just be "old school" now. I wonder
what earlier observers were saying about the trend in consumption away
from live performance and toward the mass distribution of recorded media.
There was no doubt legitimate concern for sound degradation in one sense
(the loss of acoustic purity), but a liberation of sonic opportunities
in exchange. There may be an analogue here, but I suspect the current metamorphosis
is far more radical, defying safe bets on the future of music or any aesthetic
medium, for that matter.

It was at the end of the 80s - just before Tumble was released -
that I happened to consciously think for the first time of Biota's music
(their aesthetic? their language? their grammar?) as being without a doubt
the most innovative one I had listened to in a long, long time. I discovered
the group more or less by chance, while perusing the most recent catalogue
of their UK record company, ReR. I was looking for something different
that could reawaken my interest in music, something that at the time appeared
to be a bit dormant due to the endless, growing tide of mediocrities being
released that I had to confront every day. That
was the starting point: a copy of the newly re-released LP Horde,
an album by the musical/visual collective called Mnemonists
that revealed unforeseen vistas to me. It was with a growing sense
of curiosity
that I followed the rest of the story: Rackabones (1985) by Biota,
at first
only an offshoot of Mnemonists; Bellowing Room (1987); Tinct
(1988); the
10" vinyl LP Awry (1988); Tumble (1989), Biota's first CD. It was
while listening to Tumble, where the collective's already large
canvas
was enriched by even more colours, that that fateful word came to
me: "masterpiece".

At the same time, I couldn't help but notice the deafening silence
surrounding Biota's work. In a way, this was only logical: ReR had never
possessed the kind of money that makes it possible for one to buy those
beautiful pages of colour advertisements that will easily put an artist
in the top range of a magazine's list of priorities. (A few years later,
I was a bit surprised when I heard that Biota's albums on ReR, which I
had always assumed to be all steady sellers, if not exactly a cash cow,
hadn't really sold that much. This at time when "sound" was a
topic at the centre of anybody's attention.)

On the other hand, my problem was that I had always considered the
concept of "innovation" as going hand-in-hand with that of
"controversy". Hadn't it been like that with people like Monk,
Taylor, Coleman, Braxton, and the like? Hadn't the audience revolted at the
premiere of... (a work by Stravinsky, I think)? And what about Zappa? The
only parallel I could think of was with Tod Dockstader: a (non)musician who
created a highly individual music of distinctive colours who had been declared
"persona non grata" by Academia, as a non-academic. And just like
the music by Mnemonists/Biota, Dockstader's music was definitely born in
the studio.

Indeterminacy - but I think that "non-univocal meaning"
is the preferable expression here - has always been a distinctive feature
of Biota's work, with all the types of dangers that stem from inhabiting
this modern "no man's land". To put it in a nutshell, it appeared
to me that in the course of their voyage from Horde to Tumble the group
had gradually arrived at formulating a language. At the same time, alas!,
the growing democratization of the possibility to have easy access to
the
"electronic" means of production - the studio and tapes in the
first place, soon followed by every device that could produce and modify
sound - flooded the audience with an unprecedented quantity of
"indeterminacy", and also with the whole burden of trying to
"find" a meaning in those sounds. And as soon as that perfect synonymous
of "modernity" - the laptop - appeared the circle was complete.

Though processed in highly ingenious ways, Biota's sounds have always
seen the physical performance of an instrument - be it common, unusual
or invented - as their starting point. The great amount of space given
to the acoustic guitars and to the accordion, the piano, and a certain
melodic linearity made Tumble a (relatively) accessible work. Not really
a step forward, Almost Never (1992) was a step sideways: the amount of
space given to James Gardner's flugelhorn - and the fact that Gardner wrote
some pieces on his own - made it impossible for the listener not to think
about some Davis pages. One also noticed the "vocal" role the
instrument had in the music.

Listening
to Object Holder (1995) was a disconcerting experience: the group had recorded
an album of... songs!, with a female vocalist as the main instrument. The
voice of Susanne Lewis is for this writers one of the ugliest and graceless
around, so listening to the album was not easy for me. But well beyond
the identity of the vocalist, it was the concept of the project that was
quite mysterious for me: the human voice is fatally bound to occupy centre
stage at the expense of all else, while it had always been its "democratic" -
and mysterious - palette, where no colour was dominating for too long,
that had been the group's main feature. Quite paradoxically, the most beautiful
track for this writer was the one (without a title) that closed the album,
which featured just an accordion and an "almost white noise".

Invisible
Map (2001) was much better: the featured voice (Genevieve Heistek's) I
found better, and its role was greatly reduced, compared to Object Holder;
but the whole proved to be unsatisfying for me: something that sounded
a bit
"tired" in the instrumental parts, which now started sounding a
bit mannered; while those moments where vocals were featured appeared as
they were aiming at a strange "folk" simplicity. So I arrived at
the sad conclusion that it appeared like Biota and I had already parted our
ways.

So
it's obvious that I wasn't expecting much from Biota's new CD. Let's just
say that I had not much hope left. And so I had not waited for the release
of Half A True Day with my temperature rising. Readers can well picture
my astonishment in listening to a fantastic, innovative work that in some
ways could be considered as being the group's best. And since I'm quite
conscious of the danger of being possessed by premature enthusiasm, I listened
to this album for quite some time, just to make sure. I have to say I was
favourably impressed each and every time.

Half
A True Day is a difficult album. Not at all harsh. But it possesses a plurality
of meanings that call for repeated listening sessions (in a quiet, serene
environment - this we knew already, right?). A complex work, maybe (I guess)
it will be more difficult for those who already know Biota (they will probably
have to reset their expectations about the group) than for newcomers. It
has the mysterious softness of Tumble, though at the same time being very
different.

Let's
start by saying that the sound of the album is quite pleasant, not harsh
and bright like its two immediate predecessors (better converters this
time?). Object Holder and Invisible Map had a sound that was a bit on the
rude side; here the sound encourages the listener to turn the volume up,
in order to better explore the complex relationships existing between the
various layers. Those famous "index points" are back, indicating
the tracks'
"internal separation". Again, we also have voices (for the most
part, Kristianne Gale's, I think), but in my opinion this time the group
hit the bull's eye: at pretty low volume, mostly in the background, processed
and looped, here voices become just another instrument in the palette.

My
first impression was one of déjà vu. Not in the sense that the work sounded
derivative, "already known", obviously. But at times it appeared
as I was listening to things I already - literally - knew; a good for instance
being the "rock-blues guitar played with slide" which appears
at the end of Proven Within Half/Half A True Day, which to me sounded the
same as the one which starts The Trunk on Object Holder: a "splice"?

The
feeling is the same when one listens to recurring melodies - like the one
played by the accordion at about 30" in the first track, Figure Question,
and then at the start of Pack-And-Penny Day; or the melodic phrase played
as an arpeggio on the piano at the start of Just Now Maybe, then at the
start and closing of Another Name, then played by a mallet percussion instrument
(a marimba?) at the start of Cloud Chamber.

The
whole makes one feel unsure of him/herself, with all those "motivic
variations" making one think long and hard about what s/he's listening
to. It goes without saying that one's ears are perennially alert for clues
and signals in the background.

More
often than in previous occasions, maybe, I seemed to notice similarities
with things I already knew (a "Hot Tuna moment", a "Faust
moment"...), but had I to mention all the things that awoke my attention...
So I'll just mention the backwards vocals on Globemallow, Left Untold,
and those backwards and looped on Where No One Knows. Also the organ (?)
at the "index point" 3 on Passerine. Oh, and the violin, here
and there.

Possible
parallelisms appear, like the lonely accordion accompanied by an "almost
white noise" which closes the CD bringing to one's mind the already
mentioned untitled track on Object Holder. More than once, I had the feeling
of
"almost getting the meaning, but not quite".

Mysterious
like its title, Half A True Day is an album that incorporates years of
work (and it shows, in a good sense), a fact which makes it an album "from
another time".

As
it's well known, ReR don't have the necessary means to give eyesight to
the blind, if you know what I mean. So here readers have all the burden
of the discovery (also the pleasure!).

Beppe
Colli

From New Music America 1990, Montreal Musiques Actuelles programme

Biota was founded in 1979 in Fort Collins, Colorado, as the
Mnemonist Orchestra. Over the years, the Mnemonist Orchestra developed
into Biota (the musical contingent) and Mnemonists (the visual
contingent). Both Biota and Mnemonists work as one on productions of
musical and visual components. The group has released nine albums, one
EP, and a recent CD in addition to several cassettes and compilation
ventures, on both their own Dys label and Recommended Records UK. Now in
its 11th year of studio-based recording and graphic production, the
Biota-Mnemonists ensemble visits Montreal Musiques Actuelles - New Music
America 1990 with its first live adaptation of studio technique since
1981. Renowned for its work in the two-dimensional graphic media, the
group's visual contingent will debut its motion picture efforts, with
Heidi Eversley's large-screen video imagery accompanying the sonic
performance.
Throughout its recording history, Biota-Mnemonists has placed
as much emphasis on mixdown and related studio operations as they have
on source instrument playing. The group's acoustic instrumental work can
undergo radical tonal, timbral and temporal modification via its studio
based electronic processing chains. Biota-Mnemonists' compositional
development remains highly dependent on such interactions.
Virtually all electronic sounds generated during this
performance will be derived from acoustic instrumental sources played
live on this specific occasion. No pre-recorded tapes or pre-recorded
digital samples will be mixed into the live sound.
Biota-Mnemonists' New Music America composition will blend
two very different manifestations of the acoustic playing visible on
stage:
1) the live electronic transformation of the source
instrumental playing via interactive digital and analog processing, and
2) the natural, unamplified sounds of the source instruments as they
emanate directly from stage.
All source instrumentation will be acoustic (excepting the
electric guitars), and no electronic synthesizers or sequencers will be
employed.

"Another Green World: Biota Takes You on a Trip to Another Time and Space" by Julia Loktev

On a frigid night in St. Petersburg last year, a prominent
Russian art critic boiled with excitement. "You're from Colorado! Do you
know Biota?" he asked. My affirmative nod sent him off on a reeling
description of how he imagined the band's existence - he pictured mad
scientists encamped in a fortified recording studio deep in the heart of
the desert, subsisting on hallucinogenic cacti, scheming the musical
madness.
Biota, a collective of experimental musicians and artists,
inhabit conventionally constructed houses in Denver and the Front Range
area rather than this mythical world. But in the 14 years since its
inception as the Mnemonist Orchestra, the group has developed an
international cult following and an enigmatic aura fed by the fact that
it has performed publicly only twice - most recently at the 1990 New
Music America festival in Montreal. The group remains better known
outside the state than within it.
The aggregation consists of multi-instrumentalists Tom
Katsimpalis, Steve Scholbe, Bill Sharp, Gordon Whitlow and Larry Wilson,
plus an indeterminate number of artists and musical collaborators. It
functions primarily as a studio creation, dispersing spurious radiation
on London-based Recommended Records and its won DYS label. To date, the
emissions number 12, including eight LPs, one EP, one limited-edition
cassette and two recent CD-only releases. The recordings issued since
1985 have come out under the name Biota, meaning a region's flora and
fauna, while those that appeared earlier were credited to the
Mnemonists, defined as persons with particularly voracious memories.
This latter moniker now refers to the visual component of the group. The
Mnemonist artists have produced booklets, silk-screened posters and
artistically manipulated maps of unknown sites as part of the packages
that accompany each release. The artists often create these works while
listening to the music, sketching and painting the aural worlds as they
imagine them. Katsimpalis, who is involved in both the musical and
visual aspects of the process, sometimes draws during the recording
sessions. Like him, the other musicians derive inspiration from the
paintings of Goya, Max Ernst and Francis Bacon, as well as the films of
Nicolas Roeg, Werner Herzog and David Lynch.
Working in their Fort Collins basement studio, band members
sculpt imaginary spaces and lives - aural worlds swarming with unseen
ghosts of memories past. Walls of percussion shift and shift again, and
the floor squeaks with the grind of a hurdy-gurdy. A Chinese ching and a
ukulele swing from the ceiling, while a sneaky entourage of guitars,
woodwinds and accordions come creeping through the window. Storms of
chaotic noise subside into delicate interludes. Melodic narratives weave
in and out of each other, then disappear, only to rise to haunt the
dens of dissonance again.
The key to these sonic scientists' soundtrack to senility is
in the mix. Using acoustic sources that include a rubab ( a stringed
instrument bought in Tajikistan), a Renaissance krummhorn and a
contraption known as a Marxophone, Biota explores the recording studio
as a musical instrument. Sharp, a founding member of the group,
explains, "We couldn't compose without the studio. unlike most
musicians, who use the studio to document compositions, we're using
products of the studio activity as elements of the composition."
This activity involves an ever-expanding palette of
electronic processing methods that bespeak intimate terms with
technology. The musicians use it as a tool rather than letting it use
them, thereby avoiding the fetishistic trap of technophilia that
ensnares many experimental composers. This approach virtually precludes
playing live. Sharp sums up Biota's conundrum: "To perform on stage, we
would have to somehow condense the process that takes place in the
studio over the course of many months." That would not be an easy feat
for a group that has progressed from manic free-form improvisation to a
highly craftsmanlike way of working, in which each element is
deliberately arranged in an exquisitely ordered structure. But within
that order, there is chaos; the structure is built on a foundation that
is fluidly surreal. tension between the logical and the instinctive
seethes at the core of Biota's musical aesthetic.
In a sense, the group composes films for the ears, luring the
listener through interwoven narratives with textured rhythms and
melodies. For instance, Katsimpalis recalls, "On Bellowing Room (1987,
Recommended), we shared an image of an individual who was within a room
that he or she could not get out of, and could view the world outside
the windows but was still within the parameters of a given space."
Similarly, he says, Gyromancy (1984, DYS) features "a being negotiating
precarious terrain." Biota's most recent project, Almost Never (1992,
Recommended), involves an elaborate story line in which, as Katsimpalis
tells it, "a person or being walked around the outskirts of a village,
came in, than took a road out and then returned." All of this happened
without a word being spoken.
Currently, the group is working on its 13th recording, to be
released on Recommended toward the end of this year. The members are
taking a less programmatic approach than usual to the environmental and
narrative aspects of the composition. But although no specific
parameters have been defined, the group has not completely departed from
the concept of forging abstract, symbolic spaces. Sharp insists that in
spite of growing emphasis on the strictly musical elements, Biota is
still rooted in an intuitive base. "We're still working very
romantically, but we're not being as specific about it," he says. "We're
tending to be more open and try to move through a greater degree of
emotions."
This is where the listener comes in. Biota infuses its
recordings with an array of emotional and psychological clues that force
listeners to take an active, participatory role. Familiar sounds - dogs
barking, a bicycle passing, an inviting instrumental turn - work
differently on each set of ears. "The listeners can invent their own
story line using the clues that are in the mix and their own memories,"
Sharp advises. The musicians hope that each witness gleans a different
tale from the mix, drawing on personal recollections and subconscious
desires as they pass through the densely forested Biota.
"Biota has achieved a lot of mystery," Katsimpalis admits. "I
think that's something we as a group enjoy experiencing with the music.
Each time you listen to it, some new part is going to come out. So what
the listeners experience on an emotional and psychological level is
probably going to be different each time because of what they're
bringing to the music. It's almost as if the listener is a magnet, and
that magnetic field is going to be different every time they listen, and
it's going to receive different signals from the music at each
listening."

Review of Object Holder CD, from CMJ by David Newgarden

Waking up with what seems to be a hangover, I feel my head
spinning with hazy memories of smoky late night jazz clubs, Turkish hash
dens, surreal medieval carnivals - a nightmarish jumble; it's
impossible to sort out what was real, what was a dream, and what was the
Biota album I'd been listening to far into the wee hours. Echoes of
bellowing pump organs, whimsical hurdy-gurdy, mutant guitar twang,
impressionistic piano and mournful horn dirges blend into distorted
images. The Biota septet strums, plucks, blows, hammers and squeezes
exotic and forgotten instruments to paint peculiar improvisations and
songs remembered from previous lives. The long, strange Biota journey
has produced a dozen releases, each with new textures and colors, each
with successively more melody, and on Object Holder, the surprising
development of singing (featuring the pensive voice of Susanne Lewis of
Kissyfur, Hail and A Thinking Plague). Biota is not even remotely like
any other group I can think of, and always no less than astonishing.

Review of Object Holder - from CMJ New Music Monthly (June 1995) by Douglas Wolk

Out in Colorado, the musical collective Biota (this time,
seven people plus four guests) and its visual-arts comrades Mnemonists
(three members of Biota and eight others) have been making beautiful,
startlingly original records for 15 years, untouched by genre, fashion,
influence or much of an audience -- there's really no word that
approximates what they do, even one as broad as "rock" or "jazz." They
play guitars, piano and drums; more often, though, they play accordion,
flugelhorn, hurdy-gurdy, nae, clavioline and whatever other reed,
percussion and keyboard instruments are at hand. Most of the time, their
records sound as if they'd heard about music and liked the idea of it
but never actually heard anyone else's, then come upon a cache of
instruments and learned to use them to make something that sounded good
to them. Biota's music is dense, rich and consistently lovely, with
"processing and tapework" adding rumbling, musique concrete-like layers
to the sound or streamlining it, as necessary. Object Holder,
essentially a 24-part suite with sections that segue into one another,
adds an element that's new to the group: vocals, from guest Suzanne
Lewis (a New York resident, from Biota's labelmate Hail), singing texts
by members of the group. With the incorporation of "songs," it's their
most accessible record to date, at least on its surface. But it takes
patience to appreciate it fully; it may take years to probe its depths.

Review of Almost Never from Forced Exposureby Jimmy Johnson

...in the words of Andrei Codrescu: "sometimes when they shut
off the faucets, I think of Chinese mailmen." This is another
disturbingly brilliant block of mind-mulching sound from the
Mnemonists-dissolved crew. As with their previous CD release, Tumble,
there is a further progression here towards the territory of common
knowledge. Whereas in the past a total immersion in listener confusion
seemed to be part of the creational motive, Almost Never, in a dramatic
reversal of form, even goes so far as to list individual instrumentation
for each track. So you can listen to the opening segment of "Burn
Daylight" and know that it was performed via the use of "flugelhorns,
bass clarinets, Rhodes piano, bass drums, crickets and a motorbike on
the Lampang-Denchai Road, Thailand." This scandalous clarification might
seem ungodly to some, I can even remember Byron going through quite a
crisis of faith when this thing arrived right around the same time as
Borbetomagus' equally linear-grasping Asbestos Shakedown CD came out.
Irregardless, lengthy tunnel-absorbed listening bouts with this one will
reveal no flaw in character. Spatial acoustics are wracked with
(sometimes in an almost-rock fashion), and zones of previously
unconscionable thought will flow through your synaptical cracks like so
much turbodense demon seed; experimental sound ought to blow off your
fucking roof, and that this is one more mission accomplished piece from
Biota to taste of zodiac should not come as any major shock.

Review of Almost Never - from Buttrag #8 (Chicago), May 1993

More richly twilled sonic collages, packaged, as usual,
gorgeously with a 12-page booklet rife with original artwork. While
Biota's basic m.o. in many ways remains the same all the way back to
their days as the Mnemonists (the name now seemingly assigned to their
artwork wing of the organization), their last few releases have embraced
a largely acoustic swirl with greater and greater frequency; the unique
harmonic blending and rigorous sound processing that occurs often
renders particular "instruments" unrecognizable or clearly written
passages choppy and broken-up, but the non-electric foundation or root
of the sound -palette lends a certain organic presence to the music.
Records like Tumble and Awry may appear, on the surface at least, to be
moving into a more musical vocabulary, and with Almost Never the usual
dissonance (albeit an extremely careful, beautifully sculpted
dissonance) is at its least obvious level, but it's just a trick. Biota
continue to move and progress; like precious few others playing
"experimental" music, this combo may have an identifiable "sound,' but
they don't rest on any laurels. Within the often dense, lush and
beautiful scapes Biota create, a huge sound-world is evident, and the
many strange points of reference (or things that seem to be such) are
drawn from a wide range of experience. Self-created snatches of music
derived from endless styles float in and out, the unique arrangement of
instruments (such as marxophone, hurdy gurdy, and penny whistles among
more standard choices) mesh for new textures, and the stunning
arrangement of these sounds and patterns transform the old into new, or
better yet, nothing you've heard before. Another incredible collection
that flows seamlessly.

Article in The Wire (U.K.), January 1996 by Mike Barnes

"You can't think about that music. That music is moving so
fast that if you think about it, it's like watching a train go by and
counting the cars."
The quote is Captain Beefheart's about his own music -- a
typically pithy description and a warning against uptight critical
dissection. It also could be applied to the very different sounds of
Biota.The Colorado-based group have devised a unique way of working
throughout their 16-year existence. They compose and improvise raw
material in their own studio, edit it via a painstaking process of tape
splicing -- with the introduction of found sounds where apt -- and use
this as a foundation for further playing and vocals, by guest musicians
including Chris Cutler. On the group's new release, Object Holder, there
are 11 contributors. Piano, cut-up rhythm tracks, hurdy-gurdy, pump
organ, guitars and percussion all jostle for place like buskers outside
some avant garde carnival in full swing. Hail's Susanne Lewis gives the
listener a more direct way in with some beguiling melodies. The process
and the resultant music are both long and complex, but it's a complexity
the group's Bill Sharp is keen to demystify."It's definitely a romantic
way of composition rather that classical," he explains. "As classical
composers we would simply be concerned with the individual notes, the
arrangements, the intricacies of music theory and how the composition
itself is the end. Instead we're working much more in a romantic sense
in that it's bringing in all these elements that are not purely musical.
It's intentionally designed to be elusive, but it's designed to have
enough clues for the listener to not be immediately written off."
The shifting, shuddering music, by turns turbulent and
peaceful, is full of colours and odd angles which, like the apparently
random fall of the pieces in a kaleidoscope, produce their own logic.
The analogy is apt -- as well as being influenced by Faust and musique
concrete, Sharp tends to describe Biota's music in visual metaphors. He
explains the importance of a filmic approach to their music making.
"It can start with an idea that is purely visual. Any of our
releases could be considered a composition, but it's still
sub-compositions that are linked together in a linear fashion. And any
one of these could be seen by a listener as a series of individual
settings or a moving through environments.
"Early in the group's existence we were very interested in
what certain film makers were doing with the amplification of location
sounds. Lynch and Splet, in their work on Elephant Man, were taking
location sounds and amplifying them and elevating them to an unnatural
level and creating musical content out of the environment. They were
doing something in a very conscious compositional way to create music
out of the visual realm, the setting. And we were interested by how that
could be done by a group in the studio. Very early on we were bringing
in aspects of the environment as well as standard played
instrumentation."
Biota have a separate, but symbolic, visual wing -- The
Mnemonists -- who design all their artwork and contribute when the group
make a rare live appearance.
"We did a commission for New Music In America in Montreal in
1990, and we spent a year putting together the stage production," says
Sharp. "And when it was executed we did have a multimedia presentation.
But we are so linked with the studio in our compositional process it
would be very difficult to take it on the road, that's for sure, as most
of the studio technology has to come with us."

Flatform - Quantum + Trento Symphonia + Movements of an Impossible Time + A Place to Come + Can Not Be Anything Against the Wind + 57.600 Seconds of Invisible Night and Light + Sunday 6th April, 11:42 a.m. + About zero + With Nature There Are no Special Effects, Only Consequences (f)

Ben Rivers - The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes are not Brothers (f)

Cheryl Frances-Hoad - Glory Tree (m)

Thomas Adès - The Twenty-Fifth Hour (m)

Daníel Bjarnason - Over Light Earth + Processions + Solaris (m)

Dobrinka Tabakova - String Paths (m)

Jacek Sienkiewicz - Nomatter (m)

Veli-Matti Puumala - Anna Liisa (m)

Bill Douglas - Trilogy: My Childhood, My Ain Folk, My Way Home (f)

DIALECT - Gowanus Drifts (m)

Robert Enrico - Au coeur de la vie (f)

Kara-lis Coverdale & LXV - Sirens (m)

Uljana Wolf - i mean i dislike that fate that i was made to where (b)

Mempo Giardinelli - Sultry Moon (b)

Jean-Marie Straub - Dialogue d'ombres (f)

Klaus Hoffer - Among the Bieresch (b)

Maxim Biller - U glavi Brune Schulza (b)

Svend Åge Madsen - Days with Diam + Virtue & Vice in the Middle Time (b)